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contribute to make my Parnassius
website more complete or you have any other comments, please Email me.
This site will take some time to download. Still I hope it is
worth seeing. Welcome to watch the pages!

Linnaeus named the Papilionidae butterflies the Knights. The
Knights he divided into two parts, in Latin: Equites Troes
and Equites Achivi (Trojan Knights and Greek Knights). This division no
longer is actual but the Papilionidae name as well as Knights are still
accepted for this order of Rhopalocera (day
flying) butterflies.

Parnassius butterflies belong to a family within the
Papilionidae.
Two species of the Parnassius butterfly family were named by Linnaeus
in Systema Naturae, 1758, namely Parnassius apollo and
Parnassius mnemosyne. The first of these he encountered on the island
of Gotland, Sweden, in 1741 and the second, Parnassius mnemosyne was
later described from Finland.
Linnaeus did not include apollo and mnemosyne in the order of Greek or
Trojan Knights: in this he was mistaken. Later the Parnassius species
were found to be an order of the Knights.

The IUCN Red Data Book (1985)
lists in total 573 species of Papilionidae.

The Parnassius family included
in 1985 53 species, but some still have a doubtful species
status and new species have also been discovered, mostly in mountainous
areas of Central Asia. The latest species of Parnassius to be described
was discovered in Kirghizia in 2005.

I would like to display my work mainly
in two parts. One
will show the extension of distribution of the species Parnassius
apollo into most of Scandinavia, and the
second will provide information about all Parnassius species
found.

A number of entomologists and naturalists will be presented, starting
with Linnaeus himself and hisdisciples.
Also development and change of Entomology and Natural Science
from Aristotle until our days will be discussed. Unfortunately
some pages are available in Swedish only.